A day after it returned to power in the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, the BJP has clarified it will not be in a position to ensure daily water supply to the industrial city, a promise which was made by Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar during electioneering.
“It will not be possible to provide daily water supply. But we will ensure the alternate day water supply is down with full pressure,” said BJP Pimpri-Chinchwad president Shatrughan Kate at a press conference on Sunday. BJP leaders former MP Ambar Sable, MLA Mahesh Landge, youth wing chief Anup More, former corporators Moreshwar Shedge Raju Durge, Sujata Palande and others were present.
Kate said during its tenure, BJP had ensured additional water supply to the city. “Pimpri-Chinchwad for years had only one source of water. But during our rule from 2017 to 2022, we got approval to lift additional water from Andra and Bhama Askhed dams. As of today, the city has a population of 35 lakh. In the next 10 years, the population will grow further. We will face a water problem and therefore it is important that we plan from today itself. Instead of daily water, we will ensure citizens get their adequate stock of water through full pressure water from their taps. Supplying water everyday is not a possible,” he said.
Kate also set the record straight vis-a-vis. He said the development plan which has been prepared and submitted to the state government will not be scrapped. “By scrapping development plan, we cannot achieve development. We will discuss the issue in the PCMC house. Where ever there are objections, we will take corrective steps,” he said. During the election campaigning, Ajit Pawar had said that they would scrap the DP once they come to power. “As many as 50,000 objections were received on the draft development plan. They had tried to come up with a slaughter house near the temple town of Alandi. When we come to power, we will ensure that the DP is scrapped,” he had said.
As many as 85 BJP corporators have been elected in the recently held civic elections. In the 2017 elections, 78 corporators had been elected.
Kate said BJP did not get affected by cross-voting. “But it is true that in some panels, candidates did not agree with each other. We did not force anyone to come to our party. They came on their own due to the rising popularity and acceptability of the BJP among the people as ours is the only party which has a development agenda for the city and every citizen.”
Kate said he had predicted before the results that his party will get 80 plus seats. “This was based on our anaylsis of the different seats. We were actually confident of getting more than 100 seats. But we lost some seats by a small margin. In view of such contests, I had predicted that we will get 80 plus seats and finally we got 85 seats. It shows the immense trust people of Pimpri-Chinchwad have in our ability to deliver. if we had not implemented a slew of development projects and welfare projects of the Central and State government, we would not have won this kind of landslide victory,” he said.
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In the future, Kate said the BJP will continue to ensure all round development of Pimpri-Chinchwad. “We will take all corporators along together to ensure all-round development of Pimpri-Chinchwad,” he said.
Asked about the allegations made by Ajit Pawar, Kate said, “We will probe them but most of the allegations were related to the elections. During election time, the opposition makes such wild charges… When we were in power, they hardly made any allegations. And now during the election time, they woke up. And all the allegations were made without providing any substantial proof.”
